Asee peer logo

Envisioning Equitable Pathways to STEM Graduate Education: Creating a Coalition including University of Maryland Eastern Shore, Bowie State University, and University of Maryland College Park to Make It Happen

Download Paper |

Conference

2024 Collaborative Network for Engineering & Computing Diversity (CoNECD)

Location

Arlington, Virginia

Publication Date

February 25, 2024

Start Date

February 25, 2024

End Date

February 27, 2024

Conference Session

Track 3: Technical Session 3: Envisioning Equitable Pathways to STEM Graduate Education: Creating a Coalition including University of Maryland Eastern Shore, Bowie State University, and University of Maryland College Park to Make It Happen

Tagged Topics

Diversity and CoNECD Paper Sessions

Page Count

16

DOI

10.18260/1-2--45447

Permanent URL

https://peer.asee.org/45447

Download Count

112

Paper Authors

author page

Rosemary Parker University of Maryland, College Park

author page

JACQUELINE SMITH Bowie State University

biography

Isabel K Lloyd Materials Science and Engineering Dept., University of Maryland, College Park, MD

visit author page

Prof. Lloyd has focused on teaching, student engagement, and student success throughout her career. She is the Undergraduate Program Director for the Materials Science and Engineering Department and a Keystone Professor at the University of Maryland. She has worked to increase the representation and success rate of students from under-represented groups in engineering graduate programs for more than 20 years. She has directed the Sloan Ph.D. Network in Materials Science and Engineering and Bioengineering, the Sloan Ph.D. Network in Engineering, and the Clark School Program for Exceptional Mentoring at the University of Maryland. The partnership with University of Maryland Eastern Shore and Bowie State University that produced the work presented at this CoNECD Conference paper gave her the opportunity to continue her work and extend its impact.

visit author page

author page

Jennifer Johnson Temple University

biography

Yuanwei Jin University of Maryland Eastern Shore

visit author page

Yuanwei Jin is a Professor and Chair of Department of Engineering and Aviation Sciences with the University of Maryland Eastern Shore.

visit author page

Download Paper |

Abstract

In November 2021, a University of Maryland Eastern Shore (UMES), Bowie State University (BSU) and University of Maryland College Park (UMD) coalition was awarded a planning grant by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation to develop pathways to STEM M.S. and Ph.D. degrees among Black, Latinx, and Native American students. All three schools are part of the University System of Maryland (USM), the state’s public higher education system. UMD is the state’s flagship institution and the largest provider of tech workers in the national capital region. It is sixth in the nation for the number of engineering master’s degrees and eighth for engineering Ph.D. degrees awarded to African Americans. Both UMES and BSU are Historically Black Colleges & Universities (HBCUs) with a majority of Black students. This tri-institution collaboration leveraged existing relationships as an opportunity to expand current efforts to broaden participation in STEM majors and careers between UMD and the two HBCUs in the state of Maryland. The goal of this coalition was to identify barriers to pursuing and earning STEM M.S. and Ph.D. degrees faced by Black, Latinx, and Native American students from the three institutions; to identify and cultivate internal champions and mentors who can help to overcome institutional biases; and to develop a framework for these institutions to work together in creating a pathway to graduate degrees that could be extended to other institutions. In this presentation, we will describe the findings of our research. We conducted surveys and interviews and used the data to build an understanding of the student, faculty, and administrator perspectives of the graduate school climate at UMD; we performed the analysis of 2018-2022 UMD graduate school application, admission, and enrollment data. This work helped our team to: (1) identify Faculty Champions to support and advocate for the students; (2) to develop a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) for STEM programs between UMES, BSU and UMD signed by all parties to facilitate sustained effort by our coalition; and (3) to identify Pilot Undergraduate Programs to serve as Pathways to Selected STEM Graduate Programs. We will describe the recommendations of the team with respect to curriculum alignment, early undergraduate research opportunities; holistic review of graduate applications; building a more inclusive and accessible climate at UMD, and continued partnership building among the three Maryland institutions.

Authors List: Yuanwei Jin, Rosemary Parker, Jacqueline Smith, Isabel Lloyd, Jennifer Johnson, Amida Koroma

Parker, R., & SMITH, J., & Lloyd, I. K., & Johnson, J., & Jin, Y. (2024, February), Envisioning Equitable Pathways to STEM Graduate Education: Creating a Coalition including University of Maryland Eastern Shore, Bowie State University, and University of Maryland College Park to Make It Happen Paper presented at 2024 Collaborative Network for Engineering & Computing Diversity (CoNECD), Arlington, Virginia. 10.18260/1-2--45447

ASEE holds the copyright on this document. It may be read by the public free of charge. Authors may archive their work on personal websites or in institutional repositories with the following citation: © 2024 American Society for Engineering Education. Other scholars may excerpt or quote from these materials with the same citation. When excerpting or quoting from Conference Proceedings, authors should, in addition to noting the ASEE copyright, list all the original authors and their institutions and name the host city of the conference. - Last updated April 1, 2015